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

Take it as you will.

 

For me, I felt that the sequel trilogy was like a treadmill. Oh sure, it moved, but it never actively felt like it was going anywhere. It was fun while it lasted, but in re-using so much, it felt like much of it was lacking in any point to what they were doing. It was not quite as substantive as I was expecting for being a new chapter in a popular saga.

 

The OT will start turning 50 in just a few years. Perfect opportunity to finish and theatrically release those 3D conversions, and convert the Galaxy's Edge attractions to an OT time frame, and then...

 

I went with no. They should have went with a different trilogy. I'm pretty sure they will be erased from canon at some point when someone comes along nd wants to tell the real story about what happened after the Classic movies. Kind of like how The Terminator film sequels kept trying to pretend they were the real sequel to the second movie. Granted the same issue will happen with the prequels as well.


Jason

 

I enjoyed them all to some degree or another, but no, they really didn't add anything substantive. For all their flaws, at least the PT took risks and did something different. The ST was overall little more than a hollow re-hash. Credit for Ryan Johnson though for at least trying to upset the applecart, even if JJ just went and picked it back up again and pretended like most of it didn't happen. They had an opportunity to go in a whole new direction for the third instalment, but no, it was just a less coherent retread of RotJ.

 

I voted for a different sequel trilogy. What we got had so many good or sometimes even right pieces, but poorly used and I do wish there had been a larger vision, and a desire to do something different, to bring something fresher to the Star Wars universe than what we got.

I just thought the sequels were too much of been there, done that, with lesser versions of things we had already seen in the original trilogy, plus a kind of disrespectful, deconstructionist glee when it came to many of the original trilogy heroes. Strangely enough, the original villains have not been treated so badly, or deconstructed by Disney. Vader is still a star, and got star treatment in Rogue One (providing the best, or one of the best scenes in that movie), he's gotten two well-written comic book series, his video game and cartoon appearances don't diminish him either. If anything, Disney has helped salvage the ruthlessness in the character that was blunted in the prequels. Palpatine is shown to be the ultimate mastermind of all 9 saga films, and what Lucas started with expanding on Maul's character, Disney kept doing. That being said, the sequel villains were treated with more disdain. Snoke was exposed to be nothing more than a puppet, one of many, Hux was made into a joke, and Ren never recovered-for me-from his defeat by novice Rey in Episode 7.

I wish more thought, and world-building had went into conceiving of how the galaxy would be 30 years after the fall of the Galactic Empire and we had gotten some of that explanation in the films (and not just put it in novels, comics, cartoons, etc.). I wish they had pushed more boundaries when it came to storytelling, characters, and imagination than what we got.

As it stands, they might as well just adapted the Thrawn trilogy or Dark Empire fully (and I would throw Crimson Empire in there as well) instead of the uneven sequels we got.

 

It was rather pointless. Hopefully episode 10 onwards is more eventful

 

I forgot to mention that one of the other issues I have with the ST is that after the victory in RotJ, by the time of TFA we seem to essentially be right back where we started in ANH.

What the heck happened, or failed to happen, after RotJ to bring things to this point? How did the First Order come into existence, and why has it been allowed to become such an existential threat?

Sure Starkiller Base blows up, like, five(?) planets, but it's hard for me to believe that that in and of itself could be such a massive table-turner.

If the answer is "read the books/comics/etc." then that's a real failure with regards to the films, which shouldn't rely on their audience being that familiar with the other material.

 

No way. The complaining about the ST is tiresome enough without the constant complaining of how they ruined Thrawn or Palleon or Kir Kanos.

Starkiller also destroyed the New Republic Fleet, which was the chief way they policed their systems and defend itself.

 

Starkiller Base was the epitome of lazy storytelling. It reeks of "oh crap, we don't have an exciting enough third act so quick, just shove a SUPER DEATH STAR in there or something!"

And yeah, I don't care how much of a demilitarisation bender Mothma went on, the idea that the *entire* defensive fleet of a MILLION world strong Republic is just hanging out over the capital is just bonkers. Indeed, if they had disarmed wouldn't that make The New Republic's military *less* centralised and thus less liable to be all in one place at the same time?

Again, lazy storytelling. JJ just wanted to smack the reset button and get everything back to Rebels vs Imperials, as if such superficiality defined Star Wars. He may be a fan, but like a lot of fans he just doesn't grasp what makes Star Wars compelling.

 

I voted for a different sequel trilogy.

I saw TFA at the theater and thought it was a bit too much of a retread of the first Star Wars film. And I found it a bit confusing. There were 3 factions now? The republic, the First Order and the resistance? What was the resistance's relationship with the republic? Why weren't they allied against the First Order? It didn't make a lot of sense. There was a lot of plot holes unexplained. What happened after ROTJ? I'm just a casual Star Wars fans--unlike with Star Trek I don't read any of the extra universe stuff. I really was like WTF.

I didn't get around to seeing The Last Jedi at the theater. I meant to but just never did. I'm sort of glad I didn't. That movie added nothing. As another poster noted it almost seemed like a reverse retread of The Empire Strikes Back. And the whole Leia in space scene. I kept thinking this must be someone's dream or something. When I discovered it was really part of the movie I seriously thought about just cutting my losses and returning the movie to the Redbox with extreme predudice. But I stuck it through. The whole let's get a code cracker--oh wait he's the wrong guy---now he betrayed us series of events. That was about 45 minutes of the movie they could have cut out without having any effect on the rest of the film. Seriously, it was a complete waste of time. I was kind of hoping Rey and Kylo would join forces when he held his hand out to her just to shake things up a bit and shock the audience. Something.

And that has seriously challenged my desire to see The Rise of Skywalker. First Order was passable. At least it managed to keep my interest. The Last Jedi seemed an utter waste of my time. I'm sure I'll see Rise of Skywalker at some point but I'm just not in any rush.

I saw every film from Empire Strikes Back (granted I was about 6 at the time) to TFA in the theaters. The prequels were up and down but at least they told a coherent story that added substantially to the franchise storywise. There was a purpose to each film. But the sequel trilogy? Nothing. I feel nothing. I have the first 6 films in my collection. And I still watch them periodically. But I can honestly say I have no desire to purchase the last 3 films.

Sorry for the rant but TFA and The Last Jedi were big disappointments.

 

It's not just the loss of the fleet but loss of leadership. If you knock out enough rungs in a military hierarchy then the resulting chaos can be just as devastating as a completely loss of assets.

The First Order was an opportunistic rogue nation who capitalize on the loss of leadership and chaos of the attack to assert their dominance.

 

TFA was a little less obvious that it was a rehash, but one big issue I have in bringing Palpatine back into the mix in TRoS is that it made the rehash much more blatant, because suddenly it's not just them going through the same actions again, but you have the same character going through the same motions almost verbatim as they were done with Luke and it was almost impossible to ignore. The dialog is nearly the same. At least if you're bringing someone back, do something new!

Agreed. I'd add Phasma to the list. It's like they introduced characters and they didn't know what to do with them and they were pure fodder. Waste of potential to develop them into interesting characters. At least Hux survived into the 3rd movie, but he should have lasted longer after his betrayal to set up something interesting, but instead they killed him off in the next scene. The sad thing about Phasma is, I remember Gwendolyn Christie doing the talk show rounds being excited to be part of SW and proclaiming that her part in TLJ would be bigger, and of course, she got killed without so much as a line. With a unique Stormtrooper design, I figured they'd end up doing far more with her! But she was just another cheap death.

Yes! A thousand times yes! Unfortunately it seems to be a current trend to shove exposition off the screen onto related media, a trend I despise. The same thing happened with the 2009 Star Trek reboot. It really shouldn't be that way! A recent example would be Palpatine's message. Instead of having to play Fortnite to hear it, something that critical to the plot would have helped being in the actual movie. Or imagine hearing it within the final moments of TLJ. But Fortnite? WTF?

 

Was there an outcry or endless complaining over how Rebels handled Thrawn? Or what about how he's been adapted into the new canon?

 

Yes, there was. And Thrawn's introduction to the new canon still has the comparison to the old canon. It invites too many problems for my tastes.

I'm not saying the ST is perfect-not by any stretch. But, I'm not blind to the idea that a full adaptation basically invites even more comparisons and disappointment.

 

Well, a simple scene in TLJ would have kind of simplified it abit.. have Kylo zoom back to Mustafar in a after crait battle, and a holocron pops up or just a hologram ... of the emporor telling Kylo to find him.. with an evil laugh.. that would have connected it to TROS better.. maybe a brief explanation of him making snoke to teach the grandsone of Vader etc. just some more connective tissue would have smoothed stuff out.
anyway.. I liked the series, but could have been much better, so I voted, NO, Redo it.

 

Well, that's how we got specials editions so...

 

None of which makes it any less of a Bond villain plot. Like I said, lazy storytelling.

 

Ok. Agree to disagree.

 

How does that even work though? We only see the one Starkiller attack which seems to be focused on a handful of planets located pretty close to each other. The beam also took time to propagate through space.

Was the fleet just sitting there not doing anything? Why was a portion of the fleet large enough to cripple the Republic if it was lost all in one place? This is like the opposite of the Star Trek "only ship in position to intercept" problem.

And why did TFA not show the fleet itself being attacked, or even mention it, IIRC?