Every Plot Point that Ruined the Sequel Trilogy | Star Wars Video Essay
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- čas přidán 18. 09. 2022
- When JJ Abrams made The Force Awakens, he may have inadvertently ruined the Future of the entire Star Wars franchise. In this video analysis I will be looking in depth at character arcs and plot development across multiple scenes, and analyzing how the seemingly rash decisions JJ made will have lasting consequences across every subsequent story line told in future films.
When beginning a sequel trilogy, character arcs and backstory are even more important than in the original trilogy, because there are no mystery boxes. We know Luke, Han, and Leia; we know the Star Wars characters, we know the arcs they've already taken, and the way JJ approached the story in The Force Awakens created new backstory...that the audience never even saw. In this video let's explore in detail how the poor story choices JJ Abrams made ruined not just a single film, but all future plot points for the entire sequel trilogy.
(This is a combined re-upload of what was originally a 2 part series)
#StarWars #VideoEssay
Sources:
TFA Audience Reviews: www.rottentomatoes.com/m/star...
Alias article: ew.com/article/2006/04/14/hig...
Fringe article: cliqueclack.com/tv/2011/01/22/...
Fringe article: io9.gizmodo.com/so-now-we-kno...
Cloverfield Paradox article: www.theverge.com/2018/2/7/169...
JJ's TED talk about Mystery Boxes (actually very interesting, well worth a watch): • The mystery box | JJ A...
Jake Skywalker interview: • He's Not My Luke Skywa...
TFA writers interview: www.indiewire.com/2015/12/mic...
Quote about Star Trek: / why_do_trekkies_dislik...
Lightsaber Credit: Force Storm Academy
• ATARU PHASE 1 - Force ...
Wicked Awesome Jedi/Sith Battle of the Old Republic: • STAR WARS™: The Old Re...
DBZ Power Levels: dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Th...
Falcon Model: from "Bestgreenscreen" www.greenscreenmovie.com
JJ Abrams Quote About Chewie: www.businessinsider.com/star-...
Hero Down by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-...
Artist: incompetech.com/
I Am a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Source: chriszabriskie.com/honor/
Artist: chriszabriskie.com/
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These type of analyses takes weeks to write and even longer to edit. I've got so many ideas I could easily make videos full time. But I need time to work on them. Help me grow this channel so I can be a full time creator and I will deliver you videos worth your investment in me.
Donations: ko-fi.com/darthdyt - Krátké a kreslené filmy
This was a re-upload combination of what was a 2-part series. Tried my best to clean up the old audio but at this point it is what it is 😬
Another video essay? "What Happened to Heroes?" czcams.com/video/1skSYUu1wUY/video.html
What to see one of my comedy edits? If Anakin Wasn't an Idiot: czcams.com/video/33tRbwGh9Nw/video.html
Your Anakin arch had me in chills and hyperventilating….beautiful depiction of what true character arch is.
@@oiseohiwerei445 thank you!!
@@DarthdYT all 3 films ruined the frenchise the rise of skywalker was the weakest along with the force awakens and the last jedi ruin johnson and jar jar abrams destroyed star wars forever i heard a rumor going around that jar jat abrams might direct another star trek reboot film
@@DarthdYT rey and kylo ren have no charecter they are not likable at all i do not even care about them they have nothing nothing whatsoever all the charecters in the seqel trilogy are not even likable they made one charecter and they turned him into a big complete joke
@@DarthdYT: Pause on 26:16
*Replace Luke's name with CHEWBACCA,* and you get my estranged, Self Deluded, IDIOT mother's words!!!!!! She pushed me *SO far THE WRONG WAY* to believe Han and Fucking Chewbacca were the greatest things about Star Wars - They're not, those would be the JEDI and the energy swords they wield!!! - that if not for the night she compared me to *EMPEROR PALPATINE OVER THE TRUTH OF A FACEBOOK STATUS I POSTED,* she broke my faith in this franchise harder than the "Sequel Trilogy" *(The Trilogy that Doesn't Exist Shall Not Be Named!!)* dreams it could've!!!!
First and main one - decision to repeat New Hope storyline and therefore undoing all the progress of the original trilogy.
*prepares to get piled on* I kinnnnnndaaaaaa think this isn't a problem. I understand the impsule to lable this as a failure but repeating the New Hope structure is just... how stories work. It's abildungsroman for Rey and Fin, the quintessential speculative fiction story structure.
The storyline (let's read as: plot) couldn't be more diferent. You have secondary protagonists in Han and Fin and Po - the gang does a heist on the planet's surface that is where they do the big lazer. The storyline is very different than Last Hope, but shares a similar structure - specifically, though, it shares the same McGuffin: the big lazer sateille/planet thing. Memetically? Sure. Rey is someone on a desert planet, longing for elsewhere, and happens upon her hidden heritage of being a space wizard like Luke, but that's... like I assume that's what people sign up to Star Wars for?
I'm doing the nitpick thing but nomenclature is important in these contexts: it is not repeating the same storyline.
However, the note about undoing the progress of the original trilogy is curious, I've never really felt that but I'm also not that invested in it beyond a craft perspective. How does it undo the progress of the OG films?
@@ZeroIndent bruh
@@ZeroIndent I don’t want to be mean, but not understanding undoing the progress of the previous films shows that you paid absolutely zero attention to this video, the movies they’re about, and how plot lines work in general. It’s also bad worldbuilding, but for different reasons.
Put simply, having Episode 7 being a near repeat of Episode 4 requires that the New Republic, the thing the characters in the original trilogy were fighting for has to be destroyed within the lifetimes of those that founded it. All the training, sacrifice, death, exhaustion, and terror they went through was for nothing. It means that everything we watched in the preceding films was meaningless.
On a storytelling level, doing a very close repeat of previous events in the same fictional universe is, quite bluntly, boring and not exactly stellar writing.
@@ZeroIndent It has 2 macguffins: the map to Luke’s whereabouts, and Starkiller Base. And the two are unrelated. The movie just switches from being about a mission to recover the map, to a mission to destroy Death Star 3. Because they slavishly copied 2 plot threads from “New Hope”, except in “New Hope” getting the Death Star plans logically led to the attack on the Death Star.
@ZeroIndent TFA didn't repeat ANH's "structure", it mimicked the story, the worldbuilding, the conflict.
You could make the case that TPM repeated the structure of ANH (as well as ROTJ), but the story, the setting, the conflict re-contexualize the structure while allowing it to still _feel like_ SW (but also pass as a legitimate entry in the timeline decades before).
JJ/Disney weren't thinking about how to respect the franchise (let alone the timeline), and that's what pisses fans off. It's a cheap cash grab based on nostalgia-bait. Rian Johnson is not at fault here.
That scene were Leia ignores Chewie is even worse than what you noted. Because Leia then goes up and hugs REY ... who she has never met before. We know who Leia is; Rey does not. We know who Rey is, Leia does not. It's easily one of the worst scenes in the movie and a good example of how Rey deprotagonizes everyone in the movie.
AGREED
To make it even worse, Leia didn't even look at Chewie. They both ignored the other when they both needed each other the most.
Absolutely. I remember seeing this in the cinema for the first time and I blurted out "What the fuck?" for all to hear because this scene was so jarring.
In no way did it make any sense at all for Leia to be comforting NobodyRey, while completely ignoring Chewie, who was Han's best friend for literally decades.
Other people around me turned to look with confusion in their faces, but then they got it, there was already a lot of grumbles about this movie by that point.
I didn't see anyone walking out of that cinema talking about how much they enjoyed the movie. We were all confused, angry, upset and depressed. Well done JJ.
Well, Leia doesn't like Chewbacca. That's why she snubbed him so hard in the original trilogy.
Deprotagonizes? She is the protagonist lmao. I won't disagree the scene didn't make sense but was this whole trilogy supposed to be in service to the original characters above all else?
It seems like the writers confused the Force with the magic from Harry Potter. The lightsaber "calling" Rey has "Elder Wand" written all over it.
Which is weird considering one of them wrote Episodes 5 and 6.
At this point, I believe I've spent more time watching documentary essays about all the failures of Disney Star Wars than the actual runtime of Disney Star Wars. 😄
I saw a review video that had two parts and was nearly 5 hours altogether lol
There's a pretty recent 12 hour long review of the phantom menace 🙃
Same here.They are also much more interesting than the films as well.
Shame on Disney to the fullest extent.
Because perplexing drama and mystery behind Disney’s butchering of Star Wars (and more franchises) is far more compelling than the billion dollar crap stories they wrote.
I know, without any doubt, I have spent 24hrs+ on people breaking down the sequel trilogy. I have only watched episodes VII and VIII of the sequel trilogy, once each. I have never felt the desire to watch them again, nor a desire to watch episode IX.
Episode VII was a disappointment, but I held out hope that episode VIII would make things better. The fact I have not watched episode IX, should tell you exactly where that hope went.
It's crazy that I've been watching critiques of these movies for almost 10 years and I'm still hearing new criticisms.
lol and I've got like 80 videos and a bunch of them examine the ST in different ways
I work as a freelance script doctor and get go nowhere stories and dud plot twists all the time. We were lucky to get the cinematic geniuses who came out of the 1970s and 80s. Film is now digital, and screenplays are basically mindless rehashes.
Because they're that level of garbage that people will be able to find new problems for decades to come. TLJ is literally taught in writing classes now as the perfect example of what NOT to do.
They are THAT bad.
@@chrisfisher4503 You can watch any of the sequel trilogy a million times and find something new wrong with it each and every time... without even trying...
JJ wounded Star Wars sequels, Ryan dealt the killing blow.
And then JJ returned to teabag it while the corpse was still warm.
You are disgustingly correct! 😂
Damn... That just makes me sad... Tea bagging was such a big thing in Halo.... And now that's getting pretty bad too.
idk what you'd call what the Kenobi series did to star wars then.
Digging up a skeleton and skull fucking it?
Seems accurate.
Nailed it 👍
@@bot_Est1989 couldn't that argument be made for the prequels themselves?
The problem with the mystery box is eventually you have to open it. When the audience does finally open it and it was all a dream. It sucks, because we just wasted all our time in a story that never mattered.
If you open the mystery box too late, you have to make up contrived reasons why it's still closed and that makes your characters look stupid.
I find it hilarious that a small CZcams video can produce better writing than the people Disney hired to make this trilogy
lol thanks 😅
I wouldn’t say small video, but yeah, definitely shows that people don’t know what talent is truly really out there
Large corporations are full of fake-it-til-you-make-it types as well as those that are resting on their laurels and smelling their own farts. It takes a maverick like….a young George Lucas?…to make something unique and groundbreaking. Unfortunately anyone can just take control and destroy that greatness given The chance, but always remember that you can die a hero or live long enough to become the villain. George did quite a bit of damage to his own franchise before.
It's almost like being a decent writer isn't fucking rocket science
I find it hilarious, how the entire Sequel Trilogy can be summed up with a quote from Episode 7 itself. "That's not how the Force Works! That's not how any of this eorks!"
Or even better: "A good question, for another time."
@@DarthdYT This is classic Mystery Box writing. Whenever a character says that in a film, it means that are NEVER going to answer that question. And then, if someone comes along later and explains it in another film, they can pretend that was the plan the whole time. It's an incredibly lazy way to write.
Eorks? What do you mean. Ewoks?
@@KneelB4Bacon Or worse, that means "you're only getting an answer in a book or some other supplementary material - that'll be 19.95 please"
That's not how it works according to whom? It seems like you're misunderstanding the relationship between the product, consumer, and manufacturer. This is like telling Ford that they don't know how cars work because you don't like their new model line.
The part with Anakin was so well edited. It's a good reminder of how well done his story was compared to Jake Skywalker.
Thank you!
@@DarthdYT Seconded. That was the best part of the whole thing!
@@The_Mongoose Thanks!
@@DarthdYT still love it when people claim Anakin's fall came out of nothing and was rushed. this edit of his fall was perfect.. you should clip it so people can send it to shut them up..
@@MBoeltje41 I actually have a note on my desk to upload it as a short 😅👍
It's not just JJ, pretty much ALL modern writers can only write storys with hidden secrets to try and keep you watching AND talking about it.
yeah, I've wanted to do a video on that topic for awhile. Kinda frustrating that people don't value straightforward stories anymore.
They need one hard working talented story writer to run the creative side. Too many cooks in the kitchen trying to get a gig like star wars to get rich. They won't have good stories until they put emphasis on story.
It's become about making money now, instead of telling a good story. It's focused on setting up stuff and then not paying off until much later. Which is sad because you still have people that would enjoy normal stories with worldbuilding that you could then spiral off on and create fun side stories that don't make a ton of money but would be far more rewarding.
*Stories.
And the president of Lucas films, toxic feminist, Kathleen "Darth" Kennedy
The fake scene where you reimagine Luke’s big reveal is SO awesome despite being as obviously limited as it is. Well done
Thanks 😊
What if they had gone with Mark Hammel‘s initial assumption for what his grant entrance would be like? As in, what if he had been the one who had pulled the saber instead of Ray? Would that have worked? Or would he have upstaged everyone? But even if he did, I guess that wouldn’t have been his fault necessarily. He’s Luke Skywalker. These guys aren’t. And according to this guy, they weren’t very well written anyway. But could this be saved with them writing new content between six and seven? Or not? What about the original throne books from the 1990s? Those seem like a more natural continuation of the original trilogy of the these do.
@@blindvision4703 YES, when I heard Mark say that I was like “why the fuck wasn’t that how the movie went”? And yes again, I think the Thrawn trilogy is much better than the dogshit Disney spoonfed us
@@spederm0n283 granted, to do that today would require either new actors for our heroes, or way more editing than it would be worth. In the meantime, I wonder who could be edgy enough to play Mara Jade while still making her redeemable at the end? I will see her as sort of a female, force, sensitive version of Boba Fett, but who also happens to hate Luke Skywalker. now, I haven’t finished this video, but considering the mystery involved in that trilogy, I wonder if that actually would’ve been within JJ Abrams, Ron expertise. Perhaps some dead wrong about this, though. Let me know if you’re tracking with me. Delta source, for example.
@@blindvision4703 I don't get your point. Anakin had different actors for different ages. That's how it works. And a sufficiently similar looking bloke could easily be transformed to look more like Mark Hamill these days and back when the movie came out. It's barely an inconvenience.
Another thing that happened between ep 6 &. 7, the Hosnian system became important for some reason. When watching the system get blown up, I was thinking, “who are these people?”
Good point. I think I was probably lumping that in with "the New Republic was formed" or however I phrased it. Although from what I read, apparently the NR headquarters would actually rotate between home worlds and it just happened to be on Hosian when it was destroyed? Which kind of just makes the destruction even sadder for the people of those planets if that's true.
@@DarthdYT so they did nothing in 30 years ,,aparently
Watching it blow up I was there thinking "Is this coruscant? It doesn't look like it."
@@HermitKing731 it should have been. That would at least have had some impact.
@@ravenknight4876 and it would have been a better mirror to the Empire, destroying the historical capital of the Galaxy
Interestingly enough, in legends, there's a food fight in Luke's academy and Luke casually freezes everything in the room, from people to the food in the air.
that's hilarious and awesome and so cool and now I'm sad we'll never see it
@@deanjustdean7818 👏👏
I miss star wars legends
That is so awesome
source?
About R2D2 it's incredible how The Mandalorian made him shine in a few seconds by R2 saying something to Grogu which made him trust Luke and go with him despite his fear of leaving Mando, and the trilogy never did anything with R2 in three whole movies. It's baffling.
Yeah, I've started a script on how wasted R2 was in the sequels. Pretty sad when you look back at how heroic he used to be.
There's a theory that BB-8 got more of the focus so JJ and Bad Robot could shill the merch for the sequel trilogy, as apparently Bad Robot gets revenue for characters or designs they created (hence the red armed C-3PO).
Yeah...just GOTTA shill BB-8...I EVEN THOUGHT HE WAS FUNNY...
But even his parts seemed to shrink.before the awesome might of....Mar-Rey Sue....Wonderful....
They implied Finn was gonna be a deprogrammed stormtrooper,and he was gonna be the GUY... Even Boyega seemed sidelined with this ...The thought of a stormtrooper snapping,learning the force,becoming a jedi,and dealing with his past of being a trooper...woulda been gold.
If it is true that everytime Luke appears onscreen, he takes over the show, perhaps a wise filmmaker would make the story fully his in response.
I also think that explanation is bs. At the end of Mando S1 he was quietly there standing in the background/off-screen while Mando and Grogu had their moment. He also didn't "take over" the scenes he had with Ashoka; I at least found them equally compelling and well balanced. They just needed better writers capable of handling an iconic character.
If vintage/OG characters can oblitorate new characters means you focus on the wrong characters to begin with.
Focus on writing and not on agenda
Exactly!!!
@@mohitprakash1408 Focusing on agenda is fine, so long as the writing is good and isn't thrown aside for a statement. Rage Against The Machine were able to push their message, but also layered it with good songwriting
I've recently found a lot of respect for the prequels that I never had before, but those scenes you showed of the pain on his face when killing the separatists on Mustafar, and the tears running down his face. A lot of mistakes were made with the prequels, but the overall story was a good, meaningful one.
The pain of his mother's death made Anakin unable to bear the pain of losing anyone he loved ever again. When he learned Padme's death could be prevented he did everything he could- and his actions pained him. When the deed was done, he couldn't turn back. No one could ever forgive him- he was stuck as Vader.
He chose his path, against his morals, against everything he knew- not because he wanted to, but because he needed to- because he truly couldn't live without her.
Yeah, the prequels are nowhere near perfect, but they open up so much more story. The extra stuff covered in the novels is just amazing; there's a series I think called the "Rise of Vader" series that gets into his head more and it's awesome.
Yes, the stories are great, the movies were bad. They sound better when describing them, complex layered, meaningful, symbolic.
And if nothing else, they were original.
I love how Lucas couldn't sell his movie back in 77 because studios "didn't get it"
So when he sells it and gave Disney the blueprints for this trilogy,
they deemed it too weird and made these instead
@@TreborPaulson To think that Disney rejected to produce Star Wars back in the 70s when Lucas was trying to find a producer to finance his project. And so, after buying Star Wars, Disney decided to buy Fox later.
and then when he had to live with out her. he just sunk even deeper into darkness. there was no way palps was gonna let padme live though. if she had survived childbirth there would always be this light and hope that anakin could turn back to good. the risk was there when he realized anakin had kids , but palps was to blinded by his confidence that he could turn luke to the darkside to replace vader.
The prequels are garbage
Luke originally had boulders floating in the background. They were cut for Rian. There were MANY options still open. Rian was the one that made Luke a broken hermit that ran away. The simplest (and not particularly good) answer would have been that Luke's X-Wing broke down, so he was stranded, waiting for someone to find him. Other, more interesting options, include Luke struggling with the dark side (self-quarantine), he's been fighting the Yuuzhan Vong on that planet, this is the site of a new temple with apprentices in total secret with the plan to return when the FO begins to move openly.
JJ dropped the ball. Rian punted it backwards.
Nope, none of your explanations make sense given Han died and the last time they were in danger on screen he sensed it and came rushing back. We know Luke wouldn’t have allowed it to happen under any circumstances, Rians interpretation made the most amount of sense despite how shit it is.
@@oldylad Luke's X-Wing breaking down means he *can't* come rushing back. Previously he sensed Han and Leia had been captured and were in danger, so Han dying while on a mission could absolutely be something he senses (even before it happens), but not in time to get anywhere close to do something.
Rian's version made far less sense.
If they took their time with this, they could’ve made this series quite extensive. They should’ve focused on Luke and Bens relationship and fall first, and Rey should’ve been introduced way later.
Nah you can do that with short flashbacks in 8 without having to do all that
Something just occurred to me while watching the part about Anakin's fall. In ROS, Palps says only once before has a person been able to use the Force to stop people from dying, and that he and Vader would have to work together to discover the secret. But in Rise of Skywalker, both Rey and Kylo do exactly that by saving each other from death using the Force. That shouldn't have been a thing.
At all. It was so horrible SMH
Why didn’t Anakin A TRAINED JEDI KNIGHT OF THE REPUBLIC wouldn’t know the ability that those two knew…use this ability to save his own Mother SMH
@@thetraveler1182 AND Anakin was considered the strongest force user in the Galaxy. Beyond Yoda, Luke, Mace. Everyone. Why wouldn't he be able to do it, but two fucking random untrained characters could. Insane writing.
Even worse than that bro, she pulls that ability out of her ass to bring a desert space worm back to life on her own with no outside influence before ever using it to save Kylo. And that's like 20 minutes after she uses force lightening on accident, the explanation for these things being that "she's Palpatine's granddaughter" as if Palpatine's main source of power was being force Kratos and not being a master manipulator with a lifetime of study
Star Wars is stupid.
@@thetraveler1182 the prequels suck
The problem with the Hunger Games stems from the fact that this worked in the books. We had access to Katniss' mind, and witnessed the more subtle transition. They kept the same transition in the movies, but didn't offer any compensation for this loss and it didn't work.
Exactly. A ton of films make the mistake of copying the actions in the novel without also figuring out how to show the character's written inner monologue which is where we get most of our understanding.
No the problem is it stole from battle Royal books and two movies lol😂
Although I'm so glad they didn't include the literal CHAPTERS spent chasing after Prim's cat in the middle of a global/transnational civil war - Seriously Suzanne, a cat stops mattering at that point.
@@ashholiday123 Prim's cat*. Rue fucking dies in the arena.
@@LevonBlueoak Lol thanks 😂 I have read all of the books and watched the films several times over... My brain just stopped working for a moment there lmao 😂
You did a really good job editing the conflict Anakin went through, dude.
Seriously, kudos man.
Thanks! I actually added a bit more and reuploaded that section as a stand alone vid since people seemed to enjoy it.
@DarthdYT
You ever see that one, 'Obi-Wan Remembers the Truth'?
I'd say yours is pretty close to that emotional hurtfulness.
You should get a sticker for it.
@DarthdYT
Ok yeah, I just watched it.
That was really good.
@@Stormfin thanks!
Thank you for summing up why I hated the sequel trilogy so much! I was so disappointed by all the story that happened off screen without and all the unanswered questions. I was so mad about how much they changed Luke between 6 and 7. And I have many more complains, but you already covered them.
Welcome 🙂
The movement to defend the trilogy and its decisions drives me nuts
The fan theory/proposal is to relegate the events of the sequels to an alternate universe in which the chosen one prophecy proved to be a hoax. I think it could work and I really the Skywalker needs a whole new episode 7: it doesn’t need to be a trilogy we just need a new revisit to the late Luke Skywalker or else his and basically every other arc is meaningless
It creates a huge dead end for any Disney plus show given that these characters like Cassian and Jyn end up having their sacrifices proven obsolete. The death stars were heist red herrings for Death Star destroyers
It's insane how they wasted Luke... We saw him from the very beginning. Starting of as an farmboy, becoming a powerful hero and finally like Yoda himself... and they effd it up big time.
They wasted everyone, and threw on more characters for no reason, Rose played no role other than a sidekick, and they dropped her instead of giving her development because of backlash. Jar Jar Binks got backlash because he was a goofy comic relief, so George actually made him a respectable senator and while clumsy, shows that he's actually qualified for such a role. They also added like 20 "important" new characters in EP 9 with no development, no personalities, and few motives. Who the hell is gonna say "oh I like D-O, oh I like Admiral Pryde, oh I like the black lady who had the exact same backstory as Finn but didn't exist until the last movie!"
@@theonlyMoancore Rose was there to keep Finn from buying people time to escape safely, so that Luke could kill himself by force projecting in order to do that
The idea of Phasma fighting Chewy is actually really cool. If she would have downed Finn and Hann instantly and then duked it out with Chewy that would have really made the character stand out.
Phasma was another undeveloped character that got thrown under the bantha of bad writing. She also had so much potential but was written as a joke villain.
Imagine if Phasma was just this unkillable antagonist. She endlessly pursues the protagonists and constantly gets close to killing them only for them to barely escape, instead of the trash compactor scene she actually got. Hell they could give her the darksaber if they wanted, just make her a threat, same to Hux except he was done well and then ruined in The Last Jedi. Just imagine Phasma having a final duel with Finn at the end of the trilogy while Rey is having one with Kylo, they'd literally mirror each other being "the knight and the soldier". She could've actually been an amazing foil to Finn, showing loyalty over morality while Finn is the opposite. They could kill off Hux in Ep 7 like Tarkin and replace him with Phasma literally all these options but GOD THEY JUST COULDN'T MAKE THIS MO- I MEAN ANTAGONIST A THREAT??!!!
@@tomadjarm3302 Eh, the worf effect on Han could be excused by his age.
Who are Hann and Chewy?
Do you mean Han and Chewie?
That's not a bad thing, and it's not explicitly mutually exclusive, but I like the idea of Phasma being more of Finn's adversary. She could be on that beach in the first movie (instead of Stormtrooper 007) and totally destroy Finn. In the second movie, for example, he would improve (or they wouldn't fight at all) and finally in the third he could beat her. Is it original or complicated? No. But it's almost like poetry, it rhymes.
I really like that ending you suggested for ep 7, with the mediation and the rocks. Luke being on that island would have made so much more sense if he had been so shocked by the destruction of his pupils, and so guilty since the cause was his own nephew, that he believed that he had not been ready/ strong enough, and had been arrogant to try, to rebuild it. So he retreated to the Jedi Temples to hone his powers and humble himself and come back stronger. Otherwise, why the heck did he leave a map for people to find him? (Or however the map came into existence, I don't remember). And the conflict could have come from him feeling they found him too early and he was still not ready, not strong enough, and he needed more training to be of use to them.
Or something slightly less lame than I just wrote, but FAR AWAY from the "I just gave up" Luke that we got.
I always thought that a better explanation for the map would have been that Luke wanted to create a safer place for training the next generation, one beyond the reach of the likes of Snoke and the map originally was given to Leia so that she could guide prospective force users to Luke's new temple.
Of course that's not what we got, but it would have explained the existence of the map and what Luke was doing.
Imagine actually coming up with a complete and satisfying story that leaves the audience fulfilled. Couldn’t be JJ.
Anakin's arc was showed excellent here. He suffered and lost everything. Personally if i had that kind of power, i would also do whatever i can to save my loved ones. Its basic human nature and fits well with Anakin because he wasn't indoctrinate like other young jedi
Thanks :)
Yeah and his arc is even better in the books.
So you'll throw away everything over a vague dream sequence which you quickly invalidate by choking Padme. Cool Story.
Anakin had visions of his mother dying which were accurate but ignored by jedi who basically think he should abandon her. So when he gets those visions of his pregnant wife it is a bit different than him having a bad dream and he panics and betrays the jedi to save who he loves but it is a trick and it destroys him, which is what kills her. Anakin didn't kill his wife, she is said to have died from heartbrake I'm pretty sure
@@Ted_Bell The force has been established by that point to allow you to partially see the future.
@@TheToby121 Was Anakin saving Padme for her sake or his? Heartbreak he caused by turning to the dark side and violently attacking her. Sometimes loss needs to be accepted, while visions are misleading due to a lack of context. Padme died during childbirth, but it left out the sequence of events leading to it.
Tangential to the Phasma thing, it strikes me as unusually cruel that the "heros" throw her in the trash compactor. Presumably they expect her to die a brutal death by being gradually crushed to death while surrounded by filth.
It's played off as a joke but it never felt right to me.
There was alot of weird humor in all three of those films, like in previous SW although evil minions were treated as bumbling on many occasions, the people in charge, giving the orders were as competent as hell. The Empire took L's but they were always treated as a serious threat. I assumed that Phasma was gonna be a force to be reckoned with but ultimately she was just a throwaway character that Finn got to humiliate, which was a bummer.
A lot of the jokes in the Sequel trilogy were extremely tone deaf
Well her armor is blaster proof so she wanted to go in the garbage
@@gman7497 "Throwaway character" - we all see what you did there.
classic Disney shenanigans
“You were the chosen one!”
-“I’m a person and my name is Anakin.”
Holy shit that hit hard. He was being coerced and shaped into something he never really wanted to be. He just wanted to protect the people he loved. He wanted so badly to do the right things.
Anakin will likely always be my favorite character in fiction.
My main problem is that they don’t have a movie where they let the villains win. In the prequels, they had Revenge of the Sith, where they had Anakin turn evil and the Jedi all die. In the Original Trilogy, we had The Empire Strikes Back, where Han Solo is frozen, and the rebels are significantly weakened. This never happened in the Sequel trilogy. It was just the resistance winning for 3 movies straight.
The thing is they tried. TLJ showed the resistance at its lowest point, their base wiped out and with the First order at their heels and by the end of the movie we're lead to believe the resistance has been both abandoned AND massacred nearly to a man.....and then holdo clapped the main ship of the first order and the like...10-20 survivors escape and rebuild the resistance.
You can tell they wanted it to be the ESB of the sequels but they goofed it up
I would have written it so Luke wasn’t alone on the island, he was there with the students he had that managed to survive that night in the temple. They’re maybe 5-10 people, some are sadly disabled and unable to fight anymore but still connected to the force. Luke stayed with them because he feels obligated to protect them after not being able to the first time. Luke is staying on the down low to keep them secret while he trains them up to take down the first order. Rey can talk to these people who knew Kylo personally, and be like “what an irredeemable soulless dick” and the students are like “he was my friend once, he helped me with my lightsaber skills, he felt super abandoned by his parents.” And you could learn about his past and have a reason to want him to return to the light.
Tbh Id be more annoyed if that was a thing based on context makikg it sound like all those people rey would have talked to would have been sympathetic to him. we should sprinkle in a few of those people actually agreeing that kylo is a soulless dick considering they would have been disabled and traumatized.
i always felt that rey was a survivor from when luke temple was destroyed. But we run into the age issue. clearly ben was past his teen in the flashback. So the temple destruction wasn't that far along before kylo join the first order. 5 years max but rey in her flashback look to be around 4 to 7 years old. Too young to be had been train in luke temple exscape and grown up
THIS 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
This is a perfect summarization of what is wrong with it. I always had the nagging feeling of something being off after I watched it. Like it was hollow... but I couldn't put my finger quite on what was wrong.
This explains exactly what it was.
And the terrible thing is that there's still so much more to cover. I've got a couple other videos already uploaded covering the ST and dozens more yet to make and each touch on different failures.
I think “hollow” is the perfect word for these movies. It’s all surface
It's because JJ tried to copy the _structure_ of Episode IV without understanding _why_ it was structured the way it was... while also shoehorning in another character and leaving it ambiguous as to who the protagonist is supposed to be.
Finn's arc is the biggest travesty of the Disney Star Wars movies because while he's underused, underdeveloped, and pushed aside... he's also mostly irrelevant anyway. He had potential. There's a great idea there... but they instead played it like they had competing protagonists. Finn takes away from Rey's story. Rey takes away from Finn's story. JJ tries to have it both ways and, to paraphrase a better filmmaker than JJ, you could say he goes a little too far in some places. As a result, we as the audience have no grounding. We can't form a connection.
Fynn’s character had so much potential for a dramatic and emotional redemption arc. Instead he’s relegated to comic relief.
Your critique of kylo from TFA is spot on, in ways I realized and ways I did not, or rather, just accepted as how it was.
I just sorta assumed "oh he just thought vader was way cooler and snoke force skyped him and was like 'ooo look at this dark past of your family, everyone lied to you, oooo'" and that was enough to make kylo turn.
He was NEVER a threat in my eyes, in any of the movies. Driver did an amazing job, but he was upstaged instsntly in TFA by rey, and that fact mixed with his "conflict" just coming off as weak and confusing motivation, etc. just made him feel like a secondary threat. So snoke's death especially just kinda suddenly ended any apparent threat that the first order actually had. They were more likely to infight.
So then TROS had to overcorrect to add threat because ben wasn't, so they gave the first order a bajillion death stars and rezzed the emperor. Yay.
I liked that the clone wars series helped in showing the turn to Vader in the long term one piece at a time. Can definitely see Vader popping in and out of Anakin's personality. Showing the clone wars through battles and politics was a good direction being able to easily connect many more characters. I liked the slow decline of the Republic to the Dictatorship without noticing to much as the audience.
Few of the Star Wars shows have been "amazing" recently, I can only really say Clone Wars, Mandalorian, Bad Batch, and Tales from the Jedi are gonna have me standing at the edge of my seat. But I think all of them are at least "good", I would definitely enjoy Rebels more if they cut out the filler episodes, Book of Boba Fett is mid but it's not terrible, same for Kenobi, and I haven't seen Andor yet but I'll get to watching it.
@@theonlyMoancore tales of the Jedi had me queefing. I loved seeing dooku in it
@@theonlyMoancore late but just wanted to say I would definitely recommend andor, really shows you what the empire was like and how they operated, it’s not just all about the pure evil Sith Lords running everything.
The prequels have always shown the downfall better if you know where to look. TCW Anakin has taken all the prequels' bravado and none of the angst, supplying only unmeritorious few instances of getting slightly angry and force choking someone as evidence of turning to the dark side.
The prequels are much more complicated than that, relying on subtle seduction, political manipulation, and philosophical subterfuge, set up holistically by every small thing Anakin is told and made to do.
Man, it's almost like there was already a universe of expanded lore that introduced beloved characters, fantastic side stories/plot developments, and backstory before these films came out...
as a Han Solo I was initially happy that they didn't go with the original EU. Han and Leia's story there is unnecessarily sad and tragic.
Oh how naive I was. They made things so much worse...
Yeah... That was never gonna happen. But they should have taken inspiration from better writers.
and isn't it interesting how the sequels follow the stories of the expanded universe? weird coincidence.
@@DangerDude616 ... No? Where's Rey in the EU? Is Luke married with kids in the Sequels? Are Han and Leia still together? Did they move on from Sith as the big bad guy? Does the Republic have any military or peacekeeping force whatsoever in the Sequels? Are the politics and rebuilding of a republic covered AT ALL during the Sequels?
... What's that? No? Huh. It's almost like they took one plot point and a couple of the same logical continuations like a new Jedi temple... And... That's it. Everything. All of it. Stfu.
@@plzletmebefrank No need to be so negative. They didn't cover the things you wanted to see, as blatantly as you wanted to see them, that's too bad. The clues are all there, the story is largely the same, where it matters, you just have to look a little more closely.
Dude, I don't think Abrams has ever known the end from the beginning.
bro did the greatest, coldest, and most hard-hitting edit of the luke scene and thought he could get away with it
That was awesome
I like the pointing out that ESB doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. It’s clear what the intent is, it doesn’t cut off in the middle of an action.
Exactly. Bugs me how often I hear that argument.
@@deanjustdean7818 yep, as long as the movie can function as a standalone film. Compare this to TFA where it’s explicit there are actions that directly continue on. No character arcs complete and there’s no conclusion to any story element (not actually sure what the story is to be honest).
Leaving the story with plot threads to resolve in later episodes is not the same. If ESB finished when Luke found Vader on Cloud city…..that would be a cliffhanger.
@@deanjustdean7818 exactly. I thought I gave a really clear explanation of story structure and how ep5 has a proper falling action then conclusion and thus isn't a cliffhanger. But the number of people who don't seem to understand that explanation is a bit troubling...
Well, using the same argument you can say that TFA clearly has a climax, falling action, resolution, and then ends on a stinger to leave things open for the follow-up (making no value judgments on the quality of the story here). The entire plot of the film was not left on a cliffhanger, there was resolution to the immediate conflict but not the larger one, pretty much beat for beat how it went in ANH. The only cliffhanger was about whether Luke would teach Rey (and we assume he will eventually), which is comparable to the question of how the crew was going to rescue Han Solo after ESB, leaving the audience with a strong idea of what the start of the next story will be. Having that question at the end of the film is not an important example of the sequel trilogy's shortcomings.
@@mediumvillain I see what you’re saying. ANH does work as a standalone film. If no other Star Wars movies were made you would still have a complete story. TFA ends mid-action so it’s not setting up the next movie but what happens immediately next.
I still struggle with how the characters changed or what the story was about. Blowing up Death Star Mk III is the threat the story hangs on but not clear on what it is other than….stuff happens.
how DARE you make an emotionally meaningful supercut of anakin falling to the darkside and not release it as a separate video...or at all...the stay with me mom cut over mustafar hurt me, man
lol ask and you shall receive. Check my recent uploads. I added some extra bits too, really love that edit.
@@DarthdYT a man of the people, I see
I guess what many seem to forget here:
JJ may have gotten credit for writing but in reality what he was writing came directly from the Kathleen Kennedy story group and outlines they had made. Yes, he was given the writers credit to cover,(and if unsuccessful, be scapegoated), from a story group whose ultimate story was "The Force is Female". Yes, JJ financially successful Star Wars entry was more, a green light for more sequels. As for Rian J., he followed along with the same "Story tellers" notes, his credit was both making an acceptably cohesive story of notes given to go along with the backdrop as well, he being of "true believer" of the politics of the story tellers and had no bones of inserting his self admitted brand of "Divisive Story Telling" to an existing franchise.
It may help to understand this as well:
Kathy K. only saw this as a brand. To her, Star Wars is simply a brand and the fan base are like those who gravitate toward "Role Playing" characters on the same level as Dungeons and Dragons.
To her, she has no understanding of this, she simply feels she could fit anything in and slap the title "Star Wars" on it and all have to accept it, regardless of how it was presented. Under that type of supervision, everyone else involved jumped in for the 'free for all". keep in mind too, a lot of the elements incorporated had blatant contemporary political overtones that some, at the time of production, actually was an overture to a current political movement that was extremely left in bias. As such, the current "Activism" was deployed throughout TLJ while chapter 9 was simply a course correction from what they,(the writers), thought the fans would want to see.
In Brief:
Star Wars is just a label. Kathy K. wanted to establish "Her Name as Legacy" into the brand as well as be recognized for her activism. She took a franchise that was rich in lore and wanted to make it "Her Story", ( complete with self insert ), and she took advantage, as shamelessly, of those at Disney to make a quick turn around for the 4 billion they looked to recover. As such, "Star Wars", as a label and brand, incorporates spectacular effects as a backdrop to poorly conceived, soap opera story telling with a hard core, left leaning feminist movement bend. That's what you have, period.
Perfectly stated
I agree with many of the points you brought up. However, I personally think one of the main problems with Disney's Star Wars is that they seemed to have a "message" to teach over a story to tell.
Yeah, very fair viewpoint👍
I don't agree at all with that statement. The OT has a message to tell, so does the Prequels. I mean the whole premise of the prequels is to tell the story of a failing democracy and what is causing it. The greatest movies are having something to tell about human nature, at least in my experience. I think the biggest problem is just the inability to have a cohesive message for all the movies, which is grounded in the established universe. For Example an intersting story to tell, after the OT ist trying to maintain the gained freedom from the tyrannical authority. A young republic can be unstable and can have challenging times you can explore. There are so many possiblieties but they did not know what to tell. So not having a message is in my book something very bad about the Sequels.
9:46 This is only partially true. From interviews with Rian, Abrams, and Mark Hamil, we know that the reason WHY Luke was on the island was not yet written. Abrams set up Luke's disappearance to be a plot motivator, but he did not establish the ideas of Luke's failed temple and Kylo/Ben's origins. Abrams likely had a whole different plot in his mind, or none at all. The setup was very contrived.
It was actually a big point of conflict between Mark and Rian as to why Luke was on the island. And that's where Rian picked up the reins and decided to tell the story of Luke in self-exile and separation from the force (to Mark's disappointment)
It seems to me like whoever was ultimately responsible for making Luke a hermit just did it for the shock value it added to the opening crawl. Like ""Luke Skywalker has vanished." is the most epic opening crawl ever, let's do that and figure out the details later". But it's not worth it to base an entire movie on one sentence, especially not if you don't have a very good story to back it up. And they clearly didn't.
“Abrams likely had a whole different plot in his mind, or none at all.”
I vote “none at all” 10-out-of-10 times.
@@benmarxxshow Possible. But to me what Johnson did is still worse.
I can accept incompetence as a valid excuse. Abrams is just not a good writer.
But Johnson INTENTIONALLY did what he did. It's like how you can't get 100% of the answers on a true or false test wrong unless you know the answers. Ryan KNEW how to fix the sequel trilogy, evidenced by the fact that he got pretty much every bit of character development or plot point wrong, but he chose to use Star Wars as a canvas for his postmodern art project. That is a far greater sin in my mind.
Great essay. I’ve tried to get over the failure of the sequels. I really have. But as someone who grew up knowing practically every word to the OT, read a lot of EU, etc I still can’t believe what a colossal missed opportunity it was. It makes me angry that something with so much potential was wasted by soulless corporate incompetence. And then I realize that opinions will differ, but I also just can’t wrap my head around how anyone who loved the OT could see the sequels trilogy as anything less than a massive disappointment. I can’t fathom it given all the points made here and a thousand others. And to know that Disney will not own their mistake and wipe them from canon is the cherry on top of the shit sundae.
My buddy David that I do podcasts with has an answer that may shed light on that thought...
He recently talked about how he doesn't care whatsoever about "franchises". The story of Andor is different than the story of Solo, or Last Jedi. Some people just won't care if a movie or two are bad, because not everyone is looking at it like "the entire franchise must be perfect". In fact I think most of the general audience just will watch most anything without having strong connections one way or the other. To most, it's just entertainment. I think it's likely a relatively small percentage of viewers who are "severely disappointed" by any media, as most consumers just don't care.
I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Kennedy started a billion dollar trilogy without a complete script. Lucas did it, but JJ ain't no Lucas.
Besides being the Cherry on top, it is also very sad considering how Walt Disney became so successful. This quote explains why this goes against everything the man stood for:
Walt Disney was perhaps the epitome of a showman and a businessman rolled into one. “He was a storyteller-that’s what he was very good at,” says Christopher Lucas, author of "Top Disney..." So when Walt was building an entertainment company, “he believed that everything you do should advance the story.”
Honestly, the whole off screen stuff between episodes 6 and 7 could have worked if A) Kylo had only just turned to the darkside (6 months at the most) and B) what kicked it all off wasn't Luke deciding "nepoticide is cool" but Luke turning into Fletcher from Whiplash. This would necessitate moving the First Order attacks further back, maybe they get discovered and the New Republic sents and huge expedition to deal with them which gets completely crushed and Luke panics, seeing the very evil he fought so hard to banish re-emerge. So he pushes his students to hasten their training, leading to someone getting injured or even kiIIed and the students rebelling against him.
Now Luke running away makes sense, he's not trying to run away and hide for 6 years but trying to calm down and pick himself together, Han and Leia separate not because "lmao, deadbeat dad" but because Leia suddenly goes into full leader of the rebellion mode (something like what Incredibles 2 tried to do with Bob and Helen) and Han, feeling unable to do anything, falls back to what he knows best (which could also tie up the Falcon subplot, saying he sold it at some point to detach himself from that life).
I swear I read a Star Wars book when I was younger about how Han and Leia had two kids in Luke's Jedi academy. I was hoping so hard that the twist would be that kylo and Ray are brother and sister but for reasons unknown Ray had her mind wiped or something. It would have been a good twist that is reminiscent of the themes of the original movie while still being different
Honestly that would have been better because at least Luke Han and leias overall existences would not be for nothing. Even though TFA was a rip off of a new hope I was hopeful we’d get an actual story with actual developments to the universe prior to rotj from that point on. But ultimately we just got a remake of the ot: same format, same roles, same status quo, same opposing force and same lead villain
I can confirm, jacen and jaina solo in the Star Wars Jedi academy books.
Rey being an undercover Jedi whose memories were erased would've been such a cool twist. It would explain her incoherent origin scene, her powers, Kylo's obsession, etc.
The year was 2014, and I distinctly remember hearing that Disney would be making a Star Wars sequel trilogy. Even then, I wondered why they wanted to do that. After all, the first 6 films said everything that needed to be said. The original trilogy focused on the Rebellion taking power from the evil Empire, and Luke training to be a Jedi without succumbing to the Dark Side, all while redeeming his father, Anakin/Darth Vader. The prequel trilogy felt like a logical extension of the original trilogy, showing how good government went bad, and how Anakin's desires and emotions led him to the Dark Side. What could the sequel trilogy offer? I'm sure that if some actual effort went into crafting a relatable, cohesive story, it might actually be remembered positively and be rewatchable like the previous two trilogies. In hindsight, I know that I was right to be skeptical of Episodes VII, VIII, and IX.
Well said, same with me! I had a bad feeling as soon as i heard that Lucas sold SW to Disney... Watched the first two at the cinema and was disappointed.... the last one was the cherry on top of the heap....
Never forget/forgive what they did with Luke!
THe thing is, we already had a perfect sequel trilogy, written by Timothy Zahn.
2012
Spaceballs 2: The Quest for More Money
@@JutrzenRight, the Sequel trilogy should only have been one of three things:
1) Thrawn
2) Yuuzhan Vong War
3) George Lucas’ plan for Maul to come back ruling a criminal empire
Personally I would prefer the Vong, but if Disney was dead set on having a New Republic vs. Imperial Remnant trilogy, then obviously Thrawn is the best case scenario.
I actually got goosebumps watching your Luke reveal unlike in the actual movie
Thanks :) Took forever to edit that so I'm really glad fans see something they appreciate.
Time?
Seen it, got goosebumps too
@@DarthdYT Yes. the Luke scene re-edit gave me goosebumps and would definitely have had way more visual and emotional impact!
Part of what kills phasma is how Fin just leaves his back to her while she’s addressing him, specifically about his likely shortcomings. It’s possible he’s legitimately breaking down too much to recognize the threat of dismissing her authority but she just takes it on the chin! She should command him to stand at attention and if he still didn’t in that moment, it would clearly indicate something is seriously wrong with him and that he needs to be supervised to his evaluation. The whole vibe of the scene makes her look like a total pushover.
I'm a simple man: I see a SW video essay hating on the Sequels, I click.
Imagine if Phasma’s origin was teased that she was a Mandalorian, that would explain her silver armour, it’s Beskar, she would have been a heretic for diverting from the traditional armour design, new storm troopers would have been better shots and the line in Episode 9 of “they fly now” would have had so much more meaning than just a comedic one liner, having Phasma be a Mandalorian would have been a great addition, she betrayed Mandaloor and joined the remnants of the empire… 🤷♂️
It could have been done so much better…
First things first. Your edit of the Anakin progression was incredibly well done. That being said, it highlighted not only how Lucasfilm screwed up the sequels, but the Kenobi series as well. It’s enough to make one rage at the heavens what they did to everyone involved, both actor and character alike. What a missed opportunity.
The phrase "missed opportunity" may be the most frequent one I use. I'm more upset by the wasted potential of what was thrown away than I am at what we got...if that makes any sense.
@@DarthdYT what you say is true, from a certain point of view…I personally take issue with the fact that only a couple more moments of thought from those with talent and/or competence in the craft would have been all that was needed to avoid disaster. Instead they had all the wrong people in place to ensure destruction of the brand, whilst chucking the true talent into the wind. Zahn, Karpyshyn, Stackpole; all were wasted and tossed in favor of a more ‘diverse’ team.
IMO, JJ has a key misunderstanding when it comes to ambiguity. He thinks confusion is the same as intriguing uncertainty.
The “download the Force” thing was from Ruin Johnstain. Apparently JJ’s idea (which Ruin threw out) was for Luke to use the Force through Rey. Although a better explanation than what we got, that itself creates many other issues
Not nitpicking, as you point out details that proved detrimental to plot and/or character
The sequel trilogy should have been about reconstruction, with many different factions trying to take control of the galaxy after the fall of the Empire leaves a power vacuum.
that makes no sense if you think about it - Disney
I mean, that was the plan from Lucas in a way. It was meant to be about maul leading/being a part of a very strong criminal faction that rose up during the interim. Would've been far more interesting and unique, though I'm not sure why the Skywalker a were involved other than Mail being an exsith
Or they could have just gone with Dark Forces 2, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. But they thought they could do better by reinventing the whole franchise and spit on George's work.
Or just stop making up new bullshit and go off base material that’s already out there and is solid. Like Dark Empire.
This is exactly what I've been saying for years about the sequels.
The biggest misstep started with TFA where Disney SW immediately established its pattern of violating the number one rule of good storytelling. Show. Don't tell.
Show Luke and Ben Solo's fall. Don't just tell us about how it happened afterward.
Show how the First Order rose to power. Don't just show them already back in power with no explanation after their fall in ROTJ.
Episode 7 should've consisted of Luke training his academy including a light side Ben wrestling with his emotions and lineage; building up to his fall and betrayal of Luke at the end.
Then episode 8 would've been Kylo's further fall to the Dark Side and the dire, losing battle to bring him back.
Then ep. 9 would've been his eventual redemption and return; with Luke finally passing on in some cathartic, emotionally powerful way to help save Ben. Simple and effective.
That we conversely had so much take place off-camera and only in flashbacks instead was a huge mistake resulting in unearned character turns that had significantly less emotional impact had they been built up and shown on screen instead.
Imagine the deep conversations Ben could've had with Luke about his grandfather; asking about how Anakin turned dark and returned to the light. Then asking about his death. And becoming more curious about it while becoming increasingly taken w/ the dark side which allows him to surpass his fellow students. Then his final turn coming in a vengeful rage when he blames Luke for his grandfather's death.
How much more impactful would it have been to actually see a story like that play out instead of just being relegated to ineffective flashbacks?
Disney SW's flagrantly bad storytelling/writing 101 was on display yet again with Palpatine's return. Also taking place off-camera and just told of in the opening crawl no less. And in a single, outstanding, now meme-level infamous, cringe-inducing line, "Somehow Palpatine returned".
These choices destroyed any possibility of suspense and build-up; resulting in no emotional impact whatsoever with something that should've been the exact opposite with a huge on-screen reveal.
Also, there would've been much more attachment to the new leads, Rey, Kylo, and Finn, had Ep.7 taken the time to introduce us to them through the OT characters.
Rey and Ben could've been students of Luke. One going dark, one remaining light. One betrays him while the other eventually helps to facilitate his redemption.
Just about any story that took time to allow the original characters to pass the torch to the next generation would've been much more effective than the cold intros of the new characters that we got.
With that more intelligent approach, we would've gotten to really spend time w/ Luke as we all knew him as well. And see the Luke we wanted to see after ROTJ for most of Ep.7. So witnessing his turn later would've been earned and much more widely accepted.
Instead of just being immediately and coldly confronted with his bastardized, twisted character depiction right away following decades-long anticipation of seeing his character again after holding an image of him in a certain way for years. And only being told well after it already happened how this person is now an entirely different character than the one you knew. And just expecting us to accept it.
Again Disney, know and understand the first rule of good storytelling: Show. Don't tell.
Disney and Kennedy were so hell-bent on purging everything having to do with the OT that they shot the sequels out of a canon to shove their new characters and storylines down our throats.
And with the most inexcusable, obscenely incompetent misstep of all: having NO OVERARCHING PLAN WHATSOEVER.
This is not the way to endear people to your takeover of one of the most beloved franchises in the history of film. Kathleen Kennedy and her supporting sycophants can't leave SW soon enough.
I can't recall if I included it in this video, but in an interview, Abrams/Kasden admitted the reason Luke was absent from ep7 was because they couldn't have him in the script with him "taking over the scene". Aside from everything you mentioned, these writers simply were not skilled enough to write an iconic character.
@@DarthdYT I agree. And you did mention that in this video.
You did a great job. Thanks for doing and sharing it.
@@boomieboo thank you for watching!
everything you said is right on the money, save for one -- this isn't about incompetence
disney didn't spend billions on the most valuable IP franchise on earth just to turn around and mess it up. They didn;'t overlook anything, or ignore anything.
They made exactly the films they wanted to make. You are just under the impression they were trying to make good films.
The only question that is pertinent one must ask is why would they do this on purpose, because they did, of that you can be certain.
@@merrylderrickson3147 I remember a quote from someone who said the story for ep8 had been run by the SW Story Group, and they thought fans would love it. We could use a different word other than incompetence but they definitely misjudged and it came back to bite them. Also I've also said that it's possibly they wanted to tank the franchise in the short term to be fully free to re-create the IP long term. But I now doubt that was ever the intent as they seem to be backtracking hard and trying to go back to the OT/PT that they know fans liked.
What went wrong was centering the story of the anti-heroes. Kevin Anderson's books about Luke's Jedi Training planet would have been such a brighter, better, open- ended universe to play forever within!
Your thesis is both well argued and well presented. Well done and thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
I had a debate with a Last Jedi defender who said that when Luke said: The Jedi were wrong, he meant that they were wrong that you need training to be efficient in the Force 😂
Ironically, that does seem to be the direction they went: training not needed, just download someone else's experience and off you go.
@@DarthdYT I think this guy put more thought into it then they did, to be honest.
Did you mention that in the prequels, there's an entire Jedi Temple where the Jedi do nothing but train? :D
@@KneelB4Bacon But, but.... they all got extinct because of it! 🤣
Yeah who needs training!?Everybody knows that actually putting effort in what you do to get better is useless and dogmatic!
On a serious note, I find it a bit worrying that Last Jedi defenders get to this conclusion.
I honestly thought Captain Phasma was a Resistance sympathizer (or in love with Finn), right up until the trash-compactor line.
I thought that was why she didn't report Finn when she caught him having a panic attack (I thought she was covering for him), and why she'd eagerly lower the shields when asked by Finn.
Would have made some sense if they'd at least tried something like that...
@@DarthdYT And it would have been interesting - to have a high-ranking member of the order having divided loyalties. Then *she* could've been the spy in TLJ, and it would actually have been (kinda) foreshadowed.
Only thing I can say I enjoy about the ST, when they killed Phasma off I thought, "Oh Good. That didn't take long, hope she stays dead."
I honestly thought Holdo was a First Order spy because she was being so pointlessly obstructive to the Rebel's survival.
I been binge watching a lot of Star wars content but this compilation was super well put together.. u let the scene play out when needed and don't over do the voice over.. the scenes and clips flowed nicely together
The scene with finding Luke would have been breathtakingly amazing with 1 change. The island he's on is floating above the ocean. When he fully turns there is an earthquake and a splash as he sets it down.
Lame
Ok that's actually a pretty cool idea and it calls back to when Yoda told him that "size matters not"
But then rey wouldn't look awesome by comparison
One of my favorite things in the Star Wars universe, and how GROUNDED it was, took place in KOTOR 2. You're stranded on a base that is surrounded by an asteroid field, and without grabbing the most recent star maps -- that mapped out EVERY ASTEROID AND THEIR PATHS AND SPEED -- then you couldn't leave. Attempting to jump to Hyperspeed would, in all likelihood, drive your ship through at *least* 1 asteroid, killing everyone on board. You can't just "feel it out", not as a human, nor as a droid, you had to have the precice, up-to-date maps, then allow the ships' computer to find you a safe exit.
....but no, that's not as cool as Han just "winging it" (which should've looked like him flicking a switch on and off, if we're being honest here), so that's what JJ did.
Agreed. That's like, the main purpose of the Astro mechs riding along too.
"You want to hyperspeed through a star, kid?" - Han, OT
I mean there's a theory that Han is force senstive and that theory has existed for decades IRL which they show that for once he have Force sight as he 180 no scoped that one dude with out looking or tring so if anyone could feel it out it's Han...
Also the whole how Hyperspace lines are made are by Humans taking baby steps though the potential lane to scut it out as much they dare. Which is why the unknown regions are a thing and why you can go off map like Obi-wan did in attack of the clones.
@@GreenBlueWalkthrough This doesn't really answer the problem at all. Even Anakin in EP1, apparently the most force sensitive kid in the last who knows how long, couldn't perform something which would require perfection of input down to the ten-thousandth of a second (if that even allowed for them to survive after they exited).
As the lost and lamented Dan Drazen put it, the major problems of Star Wars stemmed from there not being a Story that needed Telling, but a Product that needed Selling. The Sequel Trilogy was a corporate product first, and a coherent narrative second....that's why it fell apart. That's all.
wow, yeah that's a great quote!
Who is Dan Drazen?
@@DavidRLentz he's dan that drazes
@@arkle519 , that tells me nothing.
@@DavidRLentz dan has drazen that shi up
One thing you didn't mention about cloverfield 3- It was literally another movie about completely different stuff called The God Particle that he took and added scenes to to make it a cloverfield movie
It sucked
I knew that the sequel to Force Awakens would make or break the trilogy. Sadly, it broke it.
Looking back, the best explanation for Rey AFTER Force Awakens would have been this: she had actually trained as a child with Luke and was strong in the force. To protect her, Luke wiped her memories (this is just as believable as astral projecting himself across the galaxy, perhaps more so) and sent her to a desert planet to live a semi-normal life, away from Snoke's inquisitor-hunters. This would explain why she already had some abilities in the force in the first film, and she would not be such a... well, you all know the term.
Ultimately, I wish the first film had gone in a completely different direction, with Luke actually establishing a new kind of Jedi order. These films do not end the Skywalker saga for me. The EU does that much better.
1 million percent agree! I remember watching The Force Awakens and immediately wondering why we weren’t starting with the Rebel Alliance leaders in charge of rebuilding a galaxy. We never got to see what the hell the first order was or how it began, which would have been very interesting, seeing what these imperial spies were doing to undermine the rebels. Instead we skipped over the interesting first few chapters of a book and started at the lull near the middle of the story.
Yeah, the big issues with SW7 are that it alluded to world building instead of showing it. A lot of stuff is just "stuff happened", but some of it... needs explained. Why does the Republic have no interest in verifying any of Leia's claims? that made no sense. Also the new super-weapon was absurd.
We skipped the first few chapters because the movie that was being copy-pasted skipped them. I'm personally still baffled that people were so butthurt by the prequels they were more than ready to accept a shoddy xerox of The New Hope as a genuinely good Star Wars movie.
JJ Abrahams is like the kid in class that turns in a half completed assignment. What's done is passable sure, but it's still just partially done.
Your rendition of Rey finding Luke would have been cool as hell. Over the top or not, it would have been great. How Luke was treated was when I walked away and never looked back.
I remember leaving the theater after episode 7. Everyone I went with loved it. I remember feeling nothing but… mediocre? The entire sequel trilogy did nothing new with the series. Repeating A New Hope with episode 7 turned me off of Star Wars, and I haven’t been able to rediscover that childhood love of the franchise since.
Man you edit made me wish we got this version of luke. Its such a brilliant idea. I can imagine Rey landing on the island and something just seems off. She can’t immediately figure out what it is, but then she notices: next to her landing spot there are multiple small stones that are just floating. She picks one of them up and inspects it, she lets it go and it just goes right back to its original position. She wanders along the path, with the numbers and size of rocks and debris only rising. The suspense would go through the roof as she sees luke floating at the cliff, where the scene would play out similar to the one in your video. It would show such a progression of power levels that still would make sense and be in line with old canon, as grand master luke was the most powerful jedi to ever live. But yea instead we got this
In my mind it was the quantity that was most important; because Yoda already taught Luke that size doesn't matter, so when Abrams originally planned to have Luke lifting 2 huge rocks, that doesn't prove anything, because size doesn't matter. But.... try moving 10,000 rocks at once, in different patterns. That's an entirely different level of concentration that the films haven't shown us.
@@DarthdYT yes, it would stay consistent with what we know the force can do, but it still shows a clear progression of power. But you could also read minds and fly through space and and and
He's the son of space jesus and they turned him into the son of space brian
Holy crap your Anakin history montage is the best thing I've seen in a long time
Thanks :) You should check out my backstory videos on Rey and Finn though, I think they're way better than this 😏
It made me exhale audibly and forcefully enough (heh... forcefully... I'm sorry) to inadvertently blow some post-its around. Very powerful indeed!
Luke leaving is not the same as Luke running away. From JJ's setup you can easily make Luke search for the solution to the problem on that remote planet, instead they made him abandon the problem
Nice Vid Darth, good point about jumping past the shields but I don't think we can apply that light speed math to how fast the millenium falcon was moving. I think hyperspace is supposed to work like a separate dimension which lets you go past light speed and I don't think that necesitates that you are at or near light speed just before entering and just after leaving.
1:33:07 "You think it was luck that Chewie and I found the Falcon? If we can find it on our scanners, the First Order's not far behind." Another thing is, with that line, it makes no sense for Rey to take the Falcon to find Luke. The FO can just scan where the Falcon is and follow her there.
lmao. Great point. I've not heard someone point that out before
It's hilarious because it's an explanation that doesn't explain anything. If Han and Chewie can find the Millennium Falcon on their scanners, then why didn't they find it fifteen years ago? Also, we get no explanation how Rey is able to fly the Millennium Falcon with precision and balls. Her entire motivation was waiting in jacu for her parents to return. She has no motivation to learn about piloting or even the ability to train as a pilot. It's all she can manage to feed herself.
A similar situation is the fact that the FO was unable to track the Falcon as it landed on their own base. They wouldn't have even been able to take out the generator. Surely Kylo would just walk up to where the Falcon was and then kill all of them before they got to Rey.
Yup. The entire plot of TFA is based on an endless series of coincidences and sheer dumb luck. BB8 just happens to find Rey, who happens to find Finn, who happen to find the Millennium Falcon, then they happen to find Maz Kanata, who just happens to have the light saber of LUKE freaking SKYWALKER.
And then JJ has the balls to have Han Solo comment on his own stupid writing by having him say, "do you think it was luck . . . ." And then JJ doesn't explain why it ISN'T sheer dumb luck. Yes, JJ. That's exactly what it was. lol.
They can't "just find it", they stumbled across a YT-1300 of the same configuration and thought "Lets see". The Falcon also had some pretty extensive mods, it was basically a hotrod, so there's a possibility that Han would have been able to identify it through "drive signatures" or something.
I couldn't click on this fast enough.
Same here 😂
I could never manage to imagine a scenario that led to Luke being what we got in TLJ but if they had managed to pull it off in a way that made sense, showing a complete understanding of Luke as a character it could've been one hell of a movie. Alas, we got Rian as writer/director so that possibility was off the table right from the off.
I have a few off the top of my head.
1) much like Anakin’s nightmares, Ben has nightmares of his class turning on him and he defends himself killing all of them. He wakes up to his classmates who unbeknownst to him sensed the later half of his dreams and the scene plays out much like his dream. In the aftermath Kylo escapes, luke much like yoda turns hermit, Rey comes and luke takes the role of Ben/yoda and trains her (you can make a few tweaks but this is the foundation)
2) Luke fails in training ben to achieve balance in the force which inevitably leads to Ben destroying the temple, like becomes a hermit to gain mastery of both light and dark allowing him to train Rey in both forms creating a new form of Jedi, a skywalker
Schrodinger's cat is actually a thought experiment on the stupidity of quantum superposition. The idea the cat can be dead and alive at the same time is ridiculous, as the observation could be made by the Geiger counter that breaks the poison bottle, and/or the cat would witness both the Geiger counter going off AND the poison being broken. If events led to the cat being dead, someone outside of the box not observing that does not mean that the cat is in some suspended state until the lid is taken off...
And that's why this form of storytelling is stupid.
I remember watching it at the cinema when it came out and being annoyed when Rey, someone with no training or experience of using a lightsaber, is instantly able to defeat Kylo Ren (who is a trained Jedi). It also pissed me off that no matter what environment she's in, she's still dressed as if she was in a hot desert. On Hoth Luke is dressed for cold weather and even then it's so impossibly cold at night they have to crawl within a creature (a bantu? I forget the names) to survive. Rey is fighting in the snow. Leia surviving the vacuum of space and suddenly being able to use the force was the other one in the next film. At that point I was out.
To start what we *know* is going to a be a trilogy with the hero winning at the end of the first movie is madness. It's completely backwards storytelling. It's annoying enough when a new villain shows up and beats the established hero, but to reverse that trope is even worse because it removes a lot of storytelling possibilities. The only place to go was Rey fighting Snoke...which didn't happen. That completely screwed up the _next_ movie because now there was no bad guy to finally triumph over. Hence "somehow Palpatine returned".
I've not a huge Star Wars fan; in fact I've never even seen the sequel trilogy. However I love watching CZcams videos like this and reading comments like yours because they illustrate how badly the Star Wars has been handled. Long running popular franchises going off the rails is something we're seeing more and more of these days across various mediums but Star Wars is still probably the most stark and talked about example.
In the end by their second main continuity film, Disney did what NOBODY ELSE could. They actually managed to get Original and Prequel fans to agree on something Star Wars related.
1st thing I thought when seeing Phasma: "Okay, they want to sell more action-figures". Same goes with those hamster-critters on Lukes island and the ice-foxes (sell plushies), where they also attempted to sell more walkers in creating new ones. All those three flics are, are cash-grabs.
The critters on Luke's island have a real world reason for being in the movie, the island they filmed on had protected animals on it they weren't allowed to remove while filming so they had to CGI a creature over them to give them a reason for being there.
@@mystic0maggot401 thats a nice urban myth. It would have been easyer to remove the puffins in post by simply brushing that spot over than to CGI those moving porg critters in.
@@diymicha2 Except it is a confirmed fact, not an urban myth
The irony is that the weakness of the Sequel Trilogy sent all the toys after The Force Awakens straight to the garbage dump. Hasbro has made maybe one action figure (Evil Rey from some vision) from that era since. I feel somewhat bad for all the early adopters who bought EVERY Star Wars product prior to Ep 7th's release and now are stuck with worthless garbage they try to sell on eBay that nobody bids on.
Phasma pre-ordered the game, that's why she had the special armour.
JJ loves Mystery boxes and Ryan loves subverting expectations. So instead of answering anything, he subverted the mystery boxes by making there be no mystery. Is Snoke Plagius? He kinda looks like a Muun, but he's dead out of nowhere, never having actually done anything so it doesn't matter. God forbid we bring in the guy of the same alien species , that's a Sith lord, that was even mentioned before in the movies, who was studying Immortality as the guy who comes back from the dead, no, Palpatine just comes back with no build up what so ever.
Plagius could just be laying low for all these years, after almost dying by being overpowered by his apprentice, and not being super excited to repeat the experience. But no, a ghost voice heard throughout the galaxy, now has the Star Forge, but not the Star Forge because that would require knowing /using some of the expanded universe lore, so it can't that, but it's basically the Star Forge, also now death star lasers can just be put normal ships, and somehow Palpatine has millions of men working for him, while in isolation as a ghost on an unreachable planet...
Disney star wars is so terrible I don't consider them Canon.
Ditto Prequels Star Wars.
I abide Andor, though. And Rogue One (mostly). They seemed to have been made with love.
They should make both directors of the Star wars sequels sit down and watch this entire thing at blaster point
😅
Execution by blaster is too good for them lags make this hurt
At least they realise how shite the BL155 laser axe is
In fairness to Frieza, he was intended to be the big final boss of the entire Dragon Ball franchise and Goku's ascension into a Super Saiyan was the big climactic moment where the gap between them would be closed. But the series ended up continuing after Namek but also notice that power levels dont get brought up much in story after that
@Indignation211
I hate to be that guy, but Dragon Ball ending with Goku beating Freeza is a rumor and one no doubt started by fans who only saw the anime. And that's my guess because I started with the Z anime myself and had two chapters of the manga presented in the 24 page comic-book formats Viz used to do back in the 90s.(Man I miss the 90s...) And even I believed such a rumor at the time. But in the manga after Krillin, Tien, Chiaotzu, and Yamcha are wished back there's a time lapse before Freeza is shown in his ship with his cybernetic prosthetics as he stands in front of King Cold.
And just so you know that I'm not pulling your leg, here's a video overview on the Freeza arc: czcams.com/video/GG5EYtGYHbM/video.html to save you time, the time marker you'll be looking for is 11:18-11:24
@@DemonicRemption dragon ball ending with Goku beating Freeza is obviously real.
May not be official though (toriyama didn't come up and said that himself), but the story clearly ended there and then became just a pointless stretch.
Just like Hokuto no Ken was meant to end when Kenshiro beats Raoh and you also don't need any official annoucement to confirm that, it's just obvious. The story just continues for comercial interests only, not artistic... and then becomes lame
Another clear fact about the story is that when Toriyama was forced to stretch his story he decided to retired Goku and pass the baton to Gohan, which may also not be official but is obvious. Cell Saga was an intermediate saga with that sole purpose.
But again, due to comercial interests, Goku being way more recognizable characters by both fans and casuals than gohan, there was no turning back from that point anymore. After trying to forcing him as main character he had to go back to "goku saves the day".
While he realized that there was no way out he even gave goku a son that was his clone and no need to say here that he did that by thinking of refreshing the story with his new "Goku" but that never came to fruition
You don't need authors to officially announce those things, it's all there, recorded in their stories
To be fair JJ Abrams didn't ruin the entire trilogy with his vagueness. He set it up to be ruined, though.
The vagueness AND the massive off screen world state change could have still lead to a not great but still workable trilogy as opposed to a broken one.
But that point I'm making ignores so many other flaws just to focus on two (but the two are a collection of many. But just not the plot ones)
The minute compilation of anakins story made me feel more than all 3 sequel films combined
1:19:25
The fact that I had no memory of Maz being a force wielder until you mentioned it shows the wasted potential of her
Can't remember if I put in in there but there was a deleted scene where she used the force to bring down the roof on the troopers. Not really sure why it was cut.
Maz sucked.
Bruh. You hit the nail on the head: JJ's retreading of Ep IV screwed up the canon. Rian tried to work with it, and i love what he did, but only because of what he was given. Disney should've given JJ the trilogy, out not given him a damn thing. Dude plays the long game. Hell, give him two trilogies, but don't give him ONE film. He can't tell a story in 3 hours. Rian should be lauded for his attempt to carry on from JJ's story, not butchered. Disney dropped the ball here, not the directors, and we all paid for it.
JJ was beginning a story that happened elsewhere on The Galaxy. He lazily decided to plug Skywalker Saga characters into it. Rian TRIED to move forward from there.The fact is, Disney failed to see that JJ couldn't continue the stories the fans wanted to hear, those of Han and Chewie and Luke and Leia, in the wake of the events.of the previous 6 films... Because he didn't. He used a shitty time-jump to start a whole new story, with bits of the stories we wanted sprinkled throughout and dressed it up like something we wanted to begin with.
Then Rian jumped back into Star Wars; he dove back into the Skywalker Saga. The jarring effect of The Force Awakens shakes any of the signifigance out of rhe story itself. It's kinda sad. That failure of storytelling is sad. And Johnson's attempt at recorrect was valiant, but... Ugh. It was too little too late, unfortunately.
Man...I've edited this like 8 times...but between the points in this WONDERFUL video here, and the points I've laid out above... They make me sad. Disney FUCKED us by greenlighting this. VII and IX are just... Ugh. Cashgrabs! Shame on you, Disney. Shame on you.
I can only hang on to the idea of... A new hope with regard to writing, some time, even a long, long time from now, perhaps in a place not so far away, in the future 😂 May The Force be with you
Great video. Keep it up.
You mentioned in the video that snoke was unknown to sidious. Well if you look closely in episode 9,you can see snoke in a test tube on the planet where sidious is...but they never ever explain that. So the theory is that palpatine was puppeting snoke, but why? It'd make more sense to just have palps lead from a hologram at that point.
I think you make a lot of great points regarding JJ's decisions with Episode 7, but Ryan Johnson was still the one who turned around and consistently picked the worst possible outcome every step of the way.
oh I don't want to imply that he's blameless. I just see all the cracks in the foundation and that began with ep7.
Isn't it spells "rain" instead of "ryan", like his parents were trying to "subvert expectations"....how names are spelled....how high you can stack shit and still call it "human". Etc.
@@geraldbouvy1222bro wtf hate their art but leave people’s names out of it.
@@333_studios no.
It was f’ing horrible. There’s no denying it
I would add another one: the planets
Star wars had always science elements in it. For example:
Can a earth like planet have two suns? Tatooin
Can we live on a moon that orbits a gas giant? The rebel base in ep 4
Can we live in the clouds of Venus? Cloud city
A planet that is covered with water? kamino
A city that covers an entire planet? ...
What does the planets from the st offer?
More desert planets and earth like planets. I mean we live in a day and age, where we discover many exoplanet per year and tfa could have redeemed somewhat by including at least one interesting new planet. The very first episode from star trek had a blue plant on the first alien world, but none of the tfa planets would include such detail.
Great point. The science in Star Was gets overlooked because of the "space wizards" aspect, which was very subtle originally.
Initially I fully agreed with you, but after thinking for a minute: ep8 had a "salt planet" with a pretty unique diamond-cave mining thing going on (not groundbreaking but unique enough in the SW universe to warrant discussion). Then there's the "dead lightning-filled" planet in ep9, and that iceberg-island-asteroid too.
Really I think what you're referring to is the thought/love behind the ideas. Lucas wanted to explore Cloud City and did so from an artistic love viewpoint; whereas the ST planets just felt like generic AI generated versions based off what existed in SW previously.
@@DarthdYT the salt planet is propably the best new planet in the sequels. But compare it to Hoth.
On hoth luke got lost during a blizzard. Its cold climate was utilised well.
Crait on the other hand was not used well. Did it matter that crait was a salt planet? Lets assume instead of salt, crait is a sugar planet. This change would explain how the rebels could survive on this planet. Rian johnson used the salt for a joke and forget about it. The rise of skywalker had some interesting planets, but aside from lukes island are there any new planets that are in two movies? And these planets seem to be empty aside of one location.
I think we're in agreement. I was just saying there are some varied planets, so we can't knock them for trying, but like you said they didn't use those planets in a way that felt like they were living breathing places.
@@DarthdYT We also have ship breaking planets thanks to Fallen order, and plenty of other planets that were things like prisons, tropical resorts, fortress worlds, ancient archives beyond the republic's founding days. Just so much potential that we have been given from The Old republic game that as far as I know, haven't been even mentioned in new star wars stuff. (note, I have not seen Andor, but I do really want too!)
The like reveal could be fixed by having him meditate you only see him, it pans or zooms out (which ever works depending on the composition) to show that is was lifting not just rocks but a mountain. Ray sees this and approaches him with out a sound the mounting slowly floats down, he gets up dose the dramatic turn from the film and instead of saying nothing he says I've been waiting for you or something. This will demonstrate his power and it forces Ryan to actually make Luke a Jedi in TLJ instead of space hobo. Edit just saw the edit you did holy fuck the Saturn's rings was dope! That sequence with Luke and the rocks honestly makes me think of Last air bender for some reason.
Tbf, for tdkr we already know why bruce is sad and broken pretty early on in the film (death of rachel and breaking of his code, making him think himself a failure). Plus, we know his leg was injured at the end of the dark knight from his fall (which I think is cinematically poetic).
JJ did not just skp key points in storytelling, he stole what plot he did present. Ep 7 is Ep 4 retold. The problem is that Ep 4 was the first movie and so it was reasonable for there to be events which occurred before hand. Ep 7 was a sequel and so that setup had to appear for anything to make sense.
Or at least have something interesting and meaningful to explore in future movies. They gave us the questions, but then answered them INCREDIBLY unsatisfyingly in flashbacks and short flippant lines.
I'd argue that Katniss' character was more justified in Mockingjay. I think all the examples that you listed at the end of Catching Fire are effectively the straw that broke the camels back; or in this case, the camel that broke the straw. All the stuff she dealt with before then was more personal or on a micro level. One person gets shot, another gets sent to the Hunger Games, etc. Learning your whole home was nuked... I think that would drive even the most mentally fortified mad.
I agree. As much as I hate the Hunger Games, Katniss' character progression from Book 2 to 3 isn't something I have an issue with.
Not sure I agree that we needed to see Luke's fall... But if he was going to have fallen between the movies, we needed to see much more of our old Luke coming out of his shell in his redemption arc... an arc we never really got.
it sure was lucky that Rey caught Luke on a day when he decided to wear his jedi robes for no reason, instead of the crusty old hermit clothes he wears the rest of the time.