Poll Did the sequel trilogy add anything meaningful to the saga?
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I guess it's YMMV then.
Pretty much become my motto with this film series. I have yet to feel like I have watched the same films as the ones that get railed against online.
I'd never go so far as to rail against them (though when I saw Phantom Menace I prophetically declared it as "Disney does Star Wars"), but I definitely feel they fell short of their potential, and that if they'd been written in concert with each other there could have been a better overall product.
And nobody's going to convince me that bringing back Palpatine was a great writing choice, especially when TFA already mirrored ANH too closely for comfort.
More nitpickily I have doubts as to how such a large fragment of the Death Star II could have landed as intact as it did (though it makes for a decent visual), but I digress.
At least we didn't have to deal with any "love scenes" this time around.
And nobody's going to convince me that bringing back Palpatine was a great writing choice, especially when TFA already mirrored ANH too closely for comfort.
More nitpickily I have doubts as to how such a large fragment of the Death Star II could have landed as intact as it did (though it makes for a decent visual), but I digress.
At least we didn't have to deal with any "love scenes" this time around.
I am forever thankful for that.
Just a personal curiosity did you feel the same way with the Emperor's clone in the books?
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Yes - it shows that if you induct a farm boy from a backward planet into a failed religious cult and ask him to bring it back to its position of glory then it is always going to end badly for his family and anyone around him. Until we had the on-screen evidence, people had all sorts of strange ideas - like he could do it and get a hot wife too.
It was always going to end with him drinking milk from a space cow after getting some of his friends killed.
It was always going to end with him drinking milk from a space cow after getting some of his friends killed.
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I enjoyed them fine but definitely couldn’t say that they added anything meaningful.
I voted “another trilogy.” It’s debatable as to whether anything meaningful really can be added to the series after all these has already been said. I do think Johnson came closest to doing so in TLJ but while I enjoyed TROS, I think bringing back Palpatine ensured that for the most part this sequel trilogy was an enjoyable nostalgia trip, rather than a bold step forward.
I voted “another trilogy.” It’s debatable as to whether anything meaningful really can be added to the series after all these has already been said. I do think Johnson came closest to doing so in TLJ but while I enjoyed TROS, I think bringing back Palpatine ensured that for the most part this sequel trilogy was an enjoyable nostalgia trip, rather than a bold step forward.
I didn't read the books in which the Emperor's clone came up. I'd need some idea of what else occurs in them before I could be tempted to do so, but I find his death in RotJ pretty satisfying, and speaking as someone with a BA in Writing, to me it feels like a step back, or a crutch, to bring back a villain you already killed off unless you have a deeply compelling reason to do so. I don't feel that Palpatine's return in RoS was "deeply compelling", and I think they dropped the ball by starting the movie after news of his return has already been propagated.
I'm not sure how they could have done it without a TLJ rewrite as well (or even better, prefigure it in TFA), but I would have liked at least some foreshadowing that Palpatine was going to resurface.
Heck, they had the otherwise-useless Knights of Ren. Maybe they could have, with or without Kylo's knowledge, been involved in some sort of quest to restore Palpatine in the earlier two films that would culminate with his return in this one.
But what I most would have liked for this trilogy, because I have a vivid imagination, was a set of circumstances that would have led to the Rebellion/Imperials, or Resistance/First Order (like it even made a significant difference...) needing to actually come to the same table to deal with a larger issue. For the movies to end with the sense that there might be some actual peace in the galaxy afterward. Yeah, we kind of get that at the end of RoS, but then, we got that at the end of RotJ, and we all know how that turned out.
Improbably, perhaps Hux, who ultimately decides that he doesn't want the Resistance to win but does want Kylo to lose, best epitomizes the sense of compromise (dare I call it balance?) that I would have liked to see in these films. Some shades of gray amongst all the black-and-white. I'm kind of joking here, but Hux's actions were one of the more interesting parts of the film for me, and I was disappointed when he was summarily erased.
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That would have been interesting with the Knights of Ren. I honestly wanted to see more of them.
However, while I don't think it was foreshadowed at all, one thing I got when watching TFA with Vader's mask was the possibility of a Sith coming back. Now, that might be due to passing familiarity with the books, but I loved the idea of a Sith spirit haunting that mask and influencing Kylo Ren. At every turn Kylo is haunted by the Dark Side.
How else was it to turn out? The novels never gave the heroes "Happily Ever After" and Lucas certainly wasn't planning on it.
The obvious point to me is Snoke. If you edit Snoke out entirely, you end up with basically the same movie. Snoke served no purpose and the idea that Snoke was a Palpatine puppet really looks like it was pulled out of someone's butt, especially after the first movie definitely appeared to be setting Snoke up to be the big bad guy at the end.
No, they didn't necessarily need to have all three parts plotted out, but it would have made a more cohesive whole if they did. That was one of the aspects of the original trilogy (and probably the prequel one, too) that ended up working fairly well. Lucas had all these noted and ideas and arcs and stories in mind. That's clear when you go back and look at his original idea for "The Star Wars." His end result took all those cards, shuffled them, and placed them in different order, but it was clear they all came from the same deck. Now, I might not be a fan of Lucas later vision, but he at least had a vision of where he wanted to come from and where he wanted to go.
The Sequel Trilogy is perfectly cohesive as it is.
Oh Digific, you're the best. Any time I start to take life too seriously, I can come back here and get a good laugh.
There's nothing amusing about my statement whatsoever because it's 100% accurate.
^ Whatever, dude.
I disagree. I think it serves to show Palpatine as a master manipulator, as he did with the Clone Wars. More interesting to me is that we see the pieces after the reveal, rather than being privied to it the whole time. Snoke always struck me as a very myopic bad guy-he had a singular focus of destroying the Jedi and the Republic. In that way Snoke was very much like the Jedi he despised-the Jedi wanted to arrest Palpatine with no thought given to the consequences.
Snoke I don't think was the big bad. I think he was a tool.
What gives me a laugh is reading the rules. "Post not poster" is a real knee slapper...
Seriously, can we not do this petty sniping? If you disagree with the post then share those thoughts.
My thoughts on the post are that the only way they can reasonably be interpreted is as comedy, because the idea that the sequel trilogy is perfectly cohesive is laughable to me. And I've seen no evidence that Digific has any interest in discussing the issues themselves because twice they responded to other posters with the equivalent of "You're wrong" as though they were an Authority on the matter.
I mean, really, is any trilogy "perfectly" cohesive?
I mean, really, is any trilogy "perfectly" cohesive?
Because, thus far, discussion on the topic has not yielded anything but frustration. Those who do not like the trilogy will not like it. Those who do will continue to do so, and never the twain shall mix, kind of like the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The ST is as cohesive as the OT.
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