majorjoe23

That’s not how trilogies work! That’s now how any of this works!

dex14

Won’t happen.

stingermck

Sure why not. Who says these stories have to be confined to trilogies now

Ranger

ROTJ and ROTS could have been two movies each. Just call Part 2 Episode X.

Probably won't happen, but interesting to think about.

GoldenJCJ

Exactly. They’re churning these things out so fast anymore that splitting it into two films, calling one Episode IX and the the next one Episode X doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to me.

Mike86

I mean obviously there will be an Episode X eventually but I doubt they’d do a whatever the title of Episode IX is part one and part two. That’d be kinda silly when the Episodic films are all linked together as parts of the same main storyline.

TGM

this is only because they need the time to repair the damage from TLJ and continue with the story lines JJ setup in TFA. this is what you get when you don't have a cohesive arc and let each subsequent guy do whatever they want to do.

Bring on Episode X!

GoldenJCJ

I liked TLJ but I’m still astounded that they didn’t have at least a blueprint outlining the new trilogy.

Hell, it’s Disney. All they had to do was walk across the parking lot and ask Marvel how it’s done.

TGM

has it been confirmed that Trevorrow was fired (or he quit?) because Rian Johnson didn't leave him enough toys in the sandbox when his turn came up?

Mike86

Have you seen the Jurassic World or the sequel? Trevorrow isn’t exactly a huge loss. That said I agree that it is weird that the films weren’t coordinated better but I don’t think Star Wars is at a point where it’s not salvageable or something because of The Last Jedi.

DthRdrX

According to him and Hamill, he asked for two script changes to TLJ, Snoke/Luke staying alive, and they said no. That was the deal breaker for all parties involved.

Goldberg74

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I side with Trevorrow on this one.

Jay G.

Marvel is great, but it's pretty clear that aside from some vague goalposts like "We want to do an Avengers movie after most of them have at least one individual film" and "Thanos will be a villain down the road," they've been making it up as they go.

Mike86

They’ve done a damn good job for making it up as they go. I’d say better than a lot of franchises that have been more planned out.

Jay G.

No doubt Marvel has done great, although they've had a few duds mixed in there as well (Incredible Hulk anyone?), but 20 films over 10 years helps bury those a bit.

Also, I'm not sure how many franchises are "planned out" to any real degree, typically not more than a movie ahead. The exceptions are maybe book series adaptations, especially if they're started after the book series is finished. But while JK Rowling clearly controlled the Harry Potter story, I don't think she necessarily had a solid plan for the book series as she was writing it.

Also it's not like movies that were planned as a franchise didn't just flop on their face. Last year's Mummy movie was supposed to be the start of a whole "Dark Universe" franchise.

fumanstan

I could be wrong, but I thought I remembered a couple of MCU directors or writers saying that there were some specific plot points or scenes that were dictated by Marvel, so i'm not sure if they're really all that vague. I thought that was one of the reasons why Edgar Wright didn't end up doing Ant Man. I'm sure Phase 1 was less planned, but Phase 2 and 3 certainly feel like they had a lot of direction from Marvel to me.

Mike86

If I was guessing I would think at the very least all the Phases have probably had some sort of outline probably with some points that need to happen.

GoldenJCJ

^ Right. And I’m not saying Disney needed to have scripts for the entire trilogy written out in advance or whole scenes mapped out but a rough outline of where the trilogy was going would have been nice. Simple things like who Rey is or Snoke’s role in the series or some idea of Luke’s arc seem like fairly simple things to have mapped out.

Mike86

I would argue though that none of the MCU films are really bad movies in the sense that they’re awfully made and unwatchable. There are a couple that aren’t as good but at the very least they’re all fine movies. It’s rather impressive to me that with all the films they’ve made over the course of a decade that there hasn’t been a true bonafide flop.

Jay G.

Well, Marvel also has the advantage in that they're largely adapting characters and storylines, so they're not so much having to come up with as much from scratch, so much as adapting comics into their movie universe. I mean, Infinity War is based on one of their biggest comics storylines from 1991, over 25 years ago.

They're also very different from the Star Wars episodes in that most of the movies are standalone, with a few moments that may tie into the bigger story. They hint at things for 4-5 movies, have an Avengers film that largely tells a new story from beginning to end, and then start a new phase. They're different beasts, and they have plenty of time to plan out the next "big event" film.

Meanwhile, for Star Wars, Disney/Lucasfilm hit the ground running. They wanted a big event film out first, and then another every other year. They don't release Avengers films every other year, and they didn't lead with Avengers.

Josh-da-man

The sense I get from TLJ is that Rian Johnson really wanted to fuck up Star Wars, like it's an ego thing for him to be the guy who broke the franchise and fucked it up so badly that nobody could continue on with it. That he got Kennedy and a seeming majority of the fans to go along with it is mind-boggling.

Josh-da-man

Instead of IX Part One and IX Part Two or IX and X, they should call them VIII and IX and throw Rian Johnson's abortion down the Sarlaac Pit.

I don't think there's any way to repair the damage he did without ignoring his shitshow and starting over. It was all just a bad dream while you were recovering in the bacta suit, Finn.

Ranger

Maybe Disney wanted to see how Solo performed at the box office to determine if they needed to split Episode IX and push back spin-off plans. Of course, TLJ would be a factor, too.

Plan A: 2019 Episode IX, 2020 Kenobi.
Plan B: 2019 Episode IX, 2020 Episode X.

I know it's wishful thinkng for many, but IX filming is just starting so I don't think they can split the movie at this point.

Still... just a little overtime here and there.

story

Wow, you really did not like that movie.

I loved it, I really did. It may be my 2nd or 3rd favorite after IV and V.

I don't miss Trevorrow at all.

And we're both mega fans. What a world, you know?

tanman

Yep

This is Star Wars though. Not some poorly planned (oh wait it is!) wanna be franchise. All the more reason to plan it right from the start knowing how big this franchise is.

And this is what makes me so angry about TLJ. If they had a plan for the whole trilogy and there were reasons for the controversial changes that RJ made that would be much more acceptable but the fact that Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm just let JJ run away with presenting these mystery boxes and just let RJ crap all over Star Wars without any kind of a plan whatsoever is just unfathomable to me. How long would it have taken them to hash out an overarching plot for this trilogy? A week? A month maybe? It would have been time well spent. And yes I realize that the OT wasn't planned out from the start and made up on the fly and the PT was planned out from the start by one person. That doesn't matter and I know that if they had planned it out it it wouldn't necessarily mean that we would have gotten a good trilogy but what I do know is that by not planning anything out and making each individual movie as it comes has blown up in their face. If they had a plan they could have told fans that and we would be able to accept those changes knowing that there might be a payoff in the last film. But as it stands they are coming off as a bunch of amateurs playing the telephone game with the most important movie franchise.